


Fellswap and the Allspark

by mydarksidelovesthis



Category: Transformers (Bay Movies), Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Allspark, Alternate Universe - Fellswap, Crossover, Gender-Neutral Main Character, Monsters, Robots, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-05
Updated: 2018-06-05
Packaged: 2019-05-16 14:39:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 20,705
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14813313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mydarksidelovesthis/pseuds/mydarksidelovesthis
Summary: Two humans fell into the Underground, trying to survive.





	1. Deserted

**Author's Note:**

> Dear reader,
> 
> this is more Undertale than Transformers, so I hope you came for Undertale, specifically Fellswap. (Not to be confused with Swapfell. Fellswap is the red one, Swapfell the purple one.)
> 
> Best regards  
> My crossover side loves this

I woke up and crawled out of our hideout. Hot desert sand blew into my face like it did most of the time and made me keep my eyes nearly closed. The sand covering my skin protected me from the wind-blown particles that would otherwise sting me like thousand small needles. Another day. Two jiggers of water, that was all I needed to see another day. That was not much, I could make it - that was what I told myself. Just two jiggers and when I was lucky also some food. Two jiggers, that was all I needed to worry about for now.

This area of the desert was overgrown with thorny bushes, the very same bushes I had used to built the hideout. Nobody would see it, nobody would search here for it. However, I myself regularly got new scratches from them, which strongly reminded me why this was the best place to hide. See you later I thought before crawling away.

Actually this was not a real desert, but some kind of giant cave where I still was on search for an exit. But what really troubled me were the inhabitants: strange creatures of varying kind which called themselves "monsters". Like that one: One strange looking bird monster which was called "shifting sand tune" announced itself with deafening noise and flew close. I waited where I was without the slightest movement until it was away. The sand covering my skin was there on purpose, so I was really hard to see if one didn't know I was there. I was trying to keep my presence a secret.

It was not the strength of the monsters that worried me. They were actually pretty weak and no match for me, most of them at least I guessed. I was worried about the attention. In the previous area where we felt down there were walls and fixated ways, somehow like some underground town and there were hardly places to hide in the shadows. One time one of those monsters - a small one with wings and tear markings on its face - came too close and started to squeek in fear or excitement. I feared that it would lead an army of monsters to us. Quickly I grabbed and retched it to shut up, but it was squeeking and struggeling against my grip. I didn't know what to do and in affect I smashed it against the ground until it was quiet, then it dissolved to dust. I didn't meant to. It had not been my first kill, but the one that scared me the most. The dust left a suspicious black stain on the floor which I scoured and scoured and it would hardly go away. I tried to wash it away with water from one of the pools decorating the area, but the dust stained the water in dark grey without sinking, that was even worse! Then I noticed that the other monsters would avoid the place unconsciously as if the smell of death would repel them. So I smeared myself and my brother with the dust in hope they would not browse his hideouts.

Now in this desert I tried my best to not get seen at all and had covered myself in mud and sand.

The ground slightly fell off in one direction where there were less thorn bushes growing, but more of some sharp grass and the area was full of quicksand. I thought because of ground water. I stayed here were the ground was approximately one and a half feet. I pushed some sand away, uncovering a plastic bag I had buried here. I had digged a whole until water level, placed the bag upside down at the hole's walls with the bag's edges folded inside. With the heat the water vaporized and ran down into the folded edges. There were the two jiggers of water I needed and even some more. I took the bag out of the whole, carefully to not drop precious water. Who would have guessed that the most valuable item I owned would once be a shopping bag.

I drank two sips and slowly crawled bag to the hideout and into it. There my brother laid, no reaction when I came in. He has been unconscious since we fell into the cave, while he hit his head on one of the rocks. This was what kept me worried most of the time and I was scared to lose him. All I could do was keeping us alive until he would wake up. Brother, please wake up, I need you - I thought, but nothing, not today. Maybe tomorrow. Two more jiggers of water and we would see.

I lifted his head on my lap and gave him water, drop by drop. This took a while, but it was all I really needed to do on a day, so we had enough time.

Slightly I hoped he would wake up, but still nothing. Well, time to earn some bonus points, time to get some food. And to return the plastic bag.

Slowly I crawled back, buried the plastic bag where it has been before, not counting the time when a huge white, brittle looking spider monster passed by and I had to wait. Then I crawled further and further into that direction. Until I approached THEM, two skeleton monsters I regularly encountered in this area. One was small, wearing black armor and a red scarf, the other was huge, wearing a jacket which he mostly wore open, so I could see orange cloth behind it. I thought it was like their job to roam this area, because I saw them almost everyday and evesdropped their talks. Mostly because I had no choice and I kept lying still as long as they were close and they were in different places each day. This time I was just crawling out of the bush when I spotted them, too risky to turn back. They didn't know about my existence.

It had one good point, though. I learned something about the cave and its inhabitants. And it assured me that it was the best to stay away from them.

Right now the small skeleton - his name was Sans as I overheard - sat on the roof of a small wooden building they called "sentry station" - legs crossed and to my bad luck watching seriously over the area. The bigger one - Papyrus - lied on the windows still or what this resembled and was half asleep. When they both would fall asleep I could risk to move myself, but the small one was restless and rarely sat still.

"Did you here news about the monsters that died last week in Ruin's Home?" he asked, waking the big one up.

"Na" Papyrus yawned. "Why. Happens all the time. Send one of your Moonies if ya want to know more."

"I did. It didn't came back."

Papyrus still was not interested and closed his eyesockets again. Don't ask me how this worked for skeletons. As long as the concept of sleep for monsters was the same as for me and he wouldn't see me moving in his sleep I didn't care about such details.

"Papyrus! You said they stuporously tried to clean the dust up."

"A beginner. Also happens occasionally."

Sans anger about not be taken seriously increased. "Papyrus! What if it is a human this time? You said the killing pattern is highly unusual for a monster."

"Someone would have seen a human by now and we would know. So there is no way. Now let me sleep."

"I want a human slave!"

"Please, bro, you have hundreds of slaves."

"But they're so fragile and start shivering on every command. Papyrus?"

Or let's say they didn't know for sure about my existence. And they didn't know I was here, WE were here, that was the main point I cared about. Now I did it like the big skeleton and felt into a light sleep. This happened from time to time when I had to wait for longer. When something came close to me I woke up, everything was fine. This time I woke up to more complaining of the small skeleton.

From my feeling it got close to evening. It was hard to tell since there was no sun dictating the life rhythm in the cave, but there was a time when less monsters where roaming around what I considered night. Finally they went home and I could go on my search for food.

Actually I sucked big time in getting something to eat. For building traps I would need a knife and I had none. Even then it was not that easy. What actually would I hunt in this desert anyway? And I was not sure if the bugs living here were eatable. But luckily I had found a "hack" how to get food.

On my way I passed a small town in the desert area where some monsters including the skeleton brothers lived. Sometimes I watched monsters running around when I was passing by and had to lay still again. There was no wall or fence around the town, some backdoors just led directly into the wilderland, that meant for me that monsters came from and left to all directions and I had to be even more careful. This time I could pass by quickly.

Shortly behind the town a completely different area began. It was much colder, trees and bushes with dark bark were growing here and brown leaves covered the ground. On the side of the ways there were some swampy places. I crawled to the first one I encountered to change my disguise: I covered myself in dark mud and rolled around in the leaves. Too bad I had to move way slower here as the leaves made noise all the way.

I had considered to drag my brother into this area to hide him here, but the cold ground was a problem and the further I went the colder it got. The next area was even covered in snow. If there was an exit to the cave there, I saw no way for us to reach it in this condition, so at the moment the desert with the warm ground was the best place to keep him.

My goal was a place in the heart of this area. Hills of human trash laid around here, trash which I noticed occasionally felt down from the ceiling. This was more of a nightlife place and several monsters were looking around the garbage for things of use. Like in the poorer area of a city the monsters here took less care of their appearance and cared less about each other. When one of them occasionally noticed me - my disguise iwas not fit to a background of trash - they showed no reaction. Maybe I even looked just like another monster to them.

Here was how I got my plastic bag, there were a lot, also cans and glasses and other stuff. My greatest wish would be to find a knife, but I had no luck until now. My second wish sometimes got granted. Today was one of my lucky days - I found a sealed can with ravioli - the good kind of can, one with a lug. Missing a bag or fitting pockets I put the can under my clothes and made my way back.

In the hideout the condition of my brother hadn't changed. I lifted his head onto my lap, opened the can and fed him. I had to chew the food for him and I intented to not tell him after he woke up. Also I gave him the biggest part in hope he would get well soon, which on the other hand weakened me. This was all we ate, one can of food every couple of days. I felt tired again, so after the meal I buried the can outside and laid down beside my brother to get some sleep.

The next morning - no wait, actually I had no idea what time it was. Maybe morning, maybe noon. So the next time I wake up I started the same routine: Looking if my bro had woken up, then leaving the hideout to get the two jiggers of water I needed to keep us alive. We could live weeks without food, but only days without water and we were already scratching the limit, at least that was what my dry lips and my burning throat were saying.

On my crawl to the plastic bag I suddenly stopped. Today the skeleton brothers were roaming around here - I had to wait again.

"Did you find something already?" Sans asked. He was wandering around, but not that much. Carefully he was avoiding the bushes, which looked to me as if he was worried about damaging his clothes. 

"Sand and thorns" the big skeleton answered, standing around with the hands in his pockets.

"Bro, you're not searching!"

"C'mon, there's nothing" he replied, turning himself to look in another direction.

Sans asked: "Could you get us the permission to search in Ruin's Home ourselves?" "No, it's too dangerous." "But you said there is no human!" "I was not talking about any human."

Suddenly Sans stopped, looking at his red boots with high heels - not the best kind of shoes for the desert. The heels sank widely into the ground. He bowed down removing some sand and I realized that was just the place where I had buried the plastic bag.

As both now were busy I dared to slowly crawl closer. I hoped he would just leave the bag there, but he lifted it with two fingers, spilling the precious content on the ground. I raised behind him with a stone in my hand. I considered killing him, but then his brother would surely seek revenge and I felt to weak for a fight. Instead I grabbed his neck and let him feel the stone on his skull, just threatening to kill him.

"Drop it" I ordered quietly.

"Are you the human?" he asked before dropping the bag, which spilled some more water.

"And never touch it again" I commanded before I knocked him out. I pocketed the bag and was back in the bushes before the big skeleton noticed something had happened and ran to Sans to check on him. That has been my exact plan: to distract him and to give me time to escape.

I shared the last drops of water in the bag between me and my brother - way less than the two jiggers needed and I searched for a new place to bury the bag.

When I felt asleep somewhere while waiting I usually lost track of time. How long we have been here - one week, two weeks or just some days - I didn't know. So the next day or maybe the same day on the evening or whatever I encountered the small skeleton again in the area where I had formerly left the bag. This time he was alone. Too bad this was where I usually went through, so I tried to estimate if it would take me longer to wait for him to leave or to take the long route around, which would include area with even denser bushes where I hadn't passed through before.

This was odd. He had placed a neatly wrapped present near the hole where the bag has been. He shouted: "Human, I've got a present for you. I'm not mad at you and I won't harm you, I just want to talk." Then he sat down in the sand and waited.

Carefully I looked around and spotted his brother far-far away, just in case I guessed. He was too far to reach the small one in time if there was any danger. Still I was not convinced, I had overheard enough of their talks to not trust them. So I waited, too. I was used to waiting, he would get bored soon.

After quarter an hour Sans stood up, shouting the same sentences again and took some steps away from the present before sitting down again.

I saw how the waiting bored him. He was moving all the time, looking around, putting his head on his hand and lifting himself up again. While I laid still until my muscles ached on the slightest movement.

Finally he gave up. He stood up, walked to the present and shouted: "Human, in case you're listening, this is not a trap, see?" He pulled the ribbon and lifted the lid, but without showing me what was inside. Then he left - not without stopping and looking back a couple of times - and I could move on with my routine.

I thought it was over, but the next time he was waiting again with a present, again shouting that he wanted to talk. I considered to move our camp, but I didn't know where to go and I didn't feel strong enough to drag my brother even one step further. I didn't worry as much about getting captured or killed as I was worried about what would become of him when I wasn't there anymore to take care of him. But waiting for Sans to leave took a lot of my time and energy. My throat was burning and speeding the process up would ease my thirst sooner.

So this time I slowly and carefully crawled to the present, a stone in one hand ready to be thrown, while keeping an eye on the skeleton all the time. I came really far and I was close to the present when he finally spotted me. Good to know. He watched me while I pulled the ribbon in slow motion, then waited for some time before I lifted the lid with one finger and pushed it away. I saw him getting impatient, he drummed with his gloved fingers on his knee, but he didn't start an attack or something. Then I moved forward, peeking into the box. Inside there was a plastic bag.

"Well, those plastic bag seemed to be very important to you, so as sign of my good will I brought you another one. Though I don't really understand why you would need that, it's basically garbage, but I'm not judging you."

I didn't really know what to say. I could get more water with that, but I also needed to find even another place for it. Actually I could have gotten myself another one if I really wanted to leave my traces at as many places as possible.

"Uhm, thanks. You see I'm using it to make drinkable water. And I would prefer if you would stop seeking me. I don't intent to harm anyone, I'm just trying to survive. And I will leave as soon as possible." I started to crawl backwards where I came from while keeping an eye on him all the time.

He laughed. "No, you won't. Nobody leaves this place. Come to me, I'll help you."

I thought of the talks of him and his brother I had overheard from day to day. "I don't want your help" I said and left into the bushes where he couldn't see me anymore, even if he really tried to. Just in case I then crawled some unusual routes to confuse any followers, until I was sure nobody was following me.

His words had startled me. What did he meant by that? Was there only the exit we have come into? Would I need to fight for my life every day forever? If just my brother would wake up, it would be so much easier.

But the case was far from over. The next time Sans awaited me with another present. Now I was the one getting tired of him, so I crawled to the present on his first shout. This time its content actually gave me a feeling of happiness, but I fought it down and reminded myself to be careful.

It was a bottle of clear water. A whole bottle. I could hardly believe it. This would keep us alive for several days.

"You said you were after the water" he explained. "Do you see now? All monsters in the Underground are hostile against humans. I'm the only one that helps you. Join me and your life will be better than it is now."

I couldn't. I just couldn't take the risk. Why would I, I had heard what he was up to. I prefered a hard life in freedom over a simple life as a slave. Well, except when I felt really down in the dumps, thirsty and dirty, then the other option became somewhat inviting. How riddiculous. Every concern for my bro would keep me on the track.

"If you have poisoned the water" I said, "I just inform you that the water is not for me and it wouldn't work, so let me ask, hand on heart." Or whatever he had. "Is the water poisoned?"

"No, the water is not poisoned, nor by me nor by someone else" he assured me. He had those slightly smile, but I thought he was telling the truth.

"Thanks" I said and went on my way.

Back in the hideout I gave my bro from the new, fresh water, not before I tasted it myself to make sure it was fine by human standards. "Please, wake up. I need you here" I whispered into his ear. No reaction, as usual. Still I felt happier than usual and I gave him as much water as I thought was fine for him. I considered to use the bottle as emergency supply in case the bags would fail me. Or to use it to carry the water from the bags as the bottle made way less noise than the bag. Even the bottle itself was as much worth as the water in it to me, just priceless.

After I decided he had enough for today I laid down beside him to sleep.

I woke up and was awake as if a bright light has been switched on in my mind. Not the relaxed, continuous awakening I was used to. Plus I felt a sense of dread as if I had just awakened from a nightmare. I took a look at my brother, who looked like always, so I checked his pulse and breath. Then I startled when I heard a step outside.

Suddenly our roof flew away. I had built the hideout from the bushes that grew conveniently together, bending their twigs together and putting more material on top and on the sides. Now the loose material flew away and the twigs jumped asunder. On one end the skeleton brothers looked down on us.

"No!" I shouted and jumped onto my feet, fighting my weak legs and the colorful stains in my eyes from suddenly getting up. I looked around for a stone or something else I could use as a weapon.

"I keep them busy. Get the other one" Sans commanded his brother and summoned a couple of bones that accelerated into my direction. I dodged them, but I had a hard time staying on my feet.

"No!" I shouted again and wanted to keep Papyrus away from my brother, but Sans blocked my way.

Papyrus reached him and said: "Got him, come back."

Sans took some steps backwards to Papyrus, while keeping his eyesockets on me. Suddenly they disappeared, taking my bro with them.


	2. Holding On

I knew where they were.

I allowed me just a moment of desperation, then I reminded myself that my primary goal was to keep us alive and the second one to leave, so nothing was lost at this point. They wouldn't really harm him as long as he was unconscious - that wouldn't make any sense. And when he woke up he would be of much greater help in our escape. Fine? Fine.

Then I thought that monsters probably didn't knew much about humans, so it was better if I kept on taking care for him.

I made my way to the town, sneaky as I always did. The home of the skeleton brothers consisted of three parts I knew about. One was the huge main building, which contained at least the living room, sleeping rooms and a kitchen. On the backside of the building there was the entrance to a cellar where I only once saw Papyrus entering. And there was a smaller wooden side building they called the shed. I haven't seen it in use before, but now I saw them entering and leaving several times.

I crawled closer to the shed's backside and heared them discussing something, but I couldn't make out any words. I sneaked to the front side and peaked through the keyhole, also I now heard them: 

"Why do not just put the water in their mouth and it would disappear?" Sans asked.

"No" I heard Papyrus's deep voice. "It would be better to use a tube."

This was the moment when I stepped in.

I saw my brother lying there, still unconscious. They had chained him to the wall as if they were expecting him to wake up any moment, and had put him onto a camp bed. Now they were discussing how to take care of him.

"I will do it before you drown him" I insisted.

Sans quickly caught himself and laughed. "Don't worry. We will take good care of him. I told you I just wanted to help."

"I don't believe a single word you say" I hissed at him and pushed him aside, taking the bottle of water out of Papyrus's hands. "I heard you saying that you wanted a human slave."

"Oh, is that so" he said with a whispering, sweet voice. "And still you came here, not scared that I would 'capture' you as well."

"Yes, because you have only one set of chains." I pointed to the wall behind us, while I lifted my brother's head on my lap as I always did.

"Well, I could find another way, if I wanted to" he said with a more serious voice. "I always get what I want." He explained: "The chains are only for our safety. You have proven that you don't kill me, but we don't know about him. Humans killed a lot of us, you know? Believe what you want. Paps."

Sans left the shed, followed by Papyrus, leaving me in actual doubt. I knew what I have heard, but his explanation also made sense. Maybe he had changed his mind. Or maybe it was not the time to rack my brain about that as it didn't change anything at this point.

I gave my brother his drink.

Shortly after that Papyrus came back with a plate of food and a bucket of water. "Sans insists that you clean up the mess you made" he said, pointing to the sand tracks I left on the ground. "And maybe yourself, too. No need to hide anymore."

After I took care of everything I stepped outside the shed, my skin was feeling unusual naked and vulnerable to the grains of sand in the wind. The big skeleton had said the truth - the monsters threw a variety of glances at me, from angry over distrustful to suspicious, but no one attacked me.

I needed to verify some information, so I headed to the library. There I found it, in a history book about the Underground. It was surrounded by a barrier that let things in but nothing could go out. Damn, that meant Sans was also right when he said we wouldn't leave this place. However, the next section was interesting: A being with seven human souls could destroy the barrier and a being with a human and a monster soul could leave it. It said the so called boss monsters had a soul sustaining long enough after dead so a human could absorb it. There was also a picture of one: It looked similar to the giant goat man I had encountered in Ruin's Home. There was no way I could kill a monster like him, so this was not an option. How unfortunate.

Some time later when I was back in the shed the skeletons came again, bringing a syringe with them, containing some red stuff. It wasn't blood or anything else I could classify on a glance.

"What is that for?" I asked, not sure if it should concern me.

Papyrus explained: "We have some kind of medicine to wake up fallen monsters. We give it to them."

"So what is it??" I asked again with some panic coloring my voice. "I don't think your monster stuff works on humans."

He was avoiding a clear answer: "We are very certain it will work. It's actually not that good for monsters, but humans are much stronger, so ..."

Sans interrupted him: "Paps, just do it already." And to me: "You can thank me later."

"No!" I shouted and found myself accelerated towards a wall, where I bumped into. Before my weak body recovered from the impact they had given my brother the injection. Surprisingly it seemed to work and my brother started to move and to make some pained noises like someone fighting away a nightmare. Then he opened his eyes.

"Brother, you woke up!" I called in excitement. I ran to him and kneeled down, shielding the skeletons from his view - they shouldn't be the first things he saw after waking up. He hadn't seen any monster before and I didn't knew how he would react. He heavily liftet his head and looked around. His narrow, red eyes looked tired. "Where are we?"

"Do you remember? There was those storm raging above the city and giant robots were fighting in the clouds. I called you for help, we met near the river and we ran to the mountain, where we wanted to hide in those cave and fell down into a hole, remember?"

"You say we are in a cave?"

"Yes."

"Where is the cube the robots gave you?"

I hear Sans clearing his throat behind me - probably just for the effect, not that he really had to clear his throat. "Yeah, what cube?"

In this moment my brother realized we were not alone and saw who was behind me. "Holy moly, what are these?" His hands formed fists and he liftet himself up, preparing to fight. This made him realize he was in chains and he looked down on them but decided they wouldn't stop him from defending himself. I wanted to tell him the skeletons were okay, just to calm him down, but I wasn't sure about that.

"You were in coma for quite some time. Stay calm, I will tell you everything." And to Sans: "I promised to protect it with my life, so I won't tell you, no matter what."

My brother looked angry, but his heavy breathing told me there was also a good portion of fear playing a role. "These are skeletons? Are we dead? What is this place?"

I turned around to them. "Would you please leave us alone?"

"Yes" Sans said. "After you thanked me for waking him up."

I felt protest rising inside of me, but I wasn't in for a discussion. Let's just keep it short. "Thanks" I mumbled quietly. He was satisfied and both left. But my bro gave me a disliking glance.

When we were alone I gave him a brief summary about the time he missed.

"The first area was regularly roamed by a giant monster that looked like a goat on two legs" I told him. "I was searching around and looked over a wall where I saw this desert and a single door on the other side. So I figured the only way to it was through the house there which belonged to the giant goat man. So I dragged you to his front door where I hid you in an overgrown corner under vines. At the other end of the area there was a bed of flowers he was very fond of. So I made a mess there and while he was busy fixing it and searching for the culprit, I dragged you through his house and to the desert. When he returned and found our traces we were already away and well hidden."

He looked at me affectively. "All of this is what you did for me?"

I hold my fist out to him. "You would have done the same for me."

He bumped his fist against mine and laughed. "I would have given up by now. Your scout courses did pay off."

"Actually I'm still bad at this. I tried to make a fire, but I suck big time."

 

There was not enough space on the camp bed for both of us and the chains weren't that long, so I slept on the ground in front of the bed. The next morning Papyrus silently brought a bottle of water and a plate of food with something that resembled fries with ketchup. The ketchup was real, but the fries turned out to be some yellow-colored pieces made of wheat flour. Despite they didn't taste like fries they were pretty good actually.

I just had tasted one to make sure they were okay, then I passed the plate to my brother. He started to eat. After a while he looked at me. "What about you?" he asked.

"I will grab something outside later." When he had laid in coma they had also brought us one bottle and one plate a day and I had fed him most of it. I thought the skeletons didn't know how much humans actually ate. I had no intentions to beg anything more of them.

"So they don't give you your own portion?"

"No. They kidnapped you, so they are not our friends and I won't ask them for anything."

He hold the plate towards me. "Then I want you to get the rest."

"Do you not like it? Come on, you need to cure your injuries."

"I'm barely moving and you are running around all day. Look how thin you became."

"I'm fine." I was sitting on the ground, looking away from him so he wouldn't see how tired and weak I felt. I heard him sighing and he put the plate down. Because I didn't want to fight with him anymore I left the shed to read some books in the library.

 

When I returned around noon I found him with two new plates with pizza on them. The good kind with brown crust, sauce with sliced tomatoes and creamy cheese - but the odd fact that we got a second meal on one day could only mean one thing.

"Oh, you have told them. You shouldn't have!" I said, but I wasn't really mad at him, just surprised.

"You should take more care of yourself" he said and passed me my plate. "I can't let you starve after everything you did for me."

Gratefully I took it and we started eating together. The piece was only lukewarm. I thought he had waited with the meal until my return.

He was oddly quiet. Looking to the ground as if he was avoiding my eyes. His voice was emotionless when he said: "It would be better if you would leave this place."

I laughed. "You know that your parents would kill me if I would come back without you?" Actually we were not biological siblings. We felt like siblings, so once we decided we were which.

But he was serious. "No, really. You can run around freely. You can go home and get help. You shouldn't stay here just because of me."

I had seriously considered it and made up some plans. He was strong. If we could just get rid of his chains, we could fight our way out of here. But there were some more problems then just getting our hands onto the key. "There is a snow area, I have no idea how to get through it. And even if, there is this barrier I can't pass."

"You will find a way" he said. "I believe in you."

 

At this evening, after the skeletons had left the shed for the last time for today - I slowly got to know their routine - I gave my brother a long hug, which I usually didn't. But damn, he was important to me. I was jealous of his strength and I wish I had his fighting spirit. He was my role model. I didn't want to imagine how life was without him.

"Take good care of you" he said.

"You too" I replied and with everything I have heard about the skeletons I really meant it.

Then I left the shed for the last time.

Here was the first part of my plan. To protect myself from the cold, I went some steps into the desert, where those dry, hard grass was growing, or more likely dying. I ripped it out with full hands and stuffed it underneath my clothes.

Soon I reached the area with all the rustling leaves and a while afterwards I reached the snow, that was where my known area ended. I stepped through the path in the snow until I reached a labyrinth made of ice and a big building behind that in the distance. I didn't saw a way around it, so I thought of my brother once more to remind me to keep going and entered. It was not so hard to go through a labyrinth after all if I just kept following the right wall, it might just take a while.

Soon I noticed that my body was fairly warm especially because I was moving all the time, but my hands got so cold I had to bury them underneath my clothes. I could do nothing to help my head or my feet.

The way through the labyrinth felt like hours, but they faded away as soon as I reached the building and relieved I stepped into the warmth. It turned out to be a hotel with a convenient elevator in the entrance hall which directly lead into the Queen's castle.

The stone ways there reminded me very much of the Ruin's Home and I even found an overgrown, abandoned garden in front of the main entrance.

My breathing increased in fear as I noticed the entrance just looked like the house where the goat man had lived and I couldn't help but to hide myself nearby and watch the door for some time and listened for any clues of who might live there. But nothing happened except I started to feel stupid and called myself overreacting, then I got rid of my stuffing and just entered the door.

The inside struck me even harder. It could not be. This was exactly the goat man's house. I saw the same kitchen to the left and the same corridor leading to some rooms I hadn't explored, even the same stairs leading down in front of me, which I just had dragged my brother downwards without checking them first as I had thought: If I were wrong and they were not leading to the door I had seen on the other side from the top of the walls, then it was probably a cellar with stuff where we could hide for a while.

But there was nothing and I just had dragged him the same long empty corridor I was walking now until I reached the door. My memories were almost real, as if it had been yesterday. I had been so scared about what would happen if I had messed up messing the garden up, if I had wrongly estimated the time it would take us. What would happen if the goat man returned while we were still here and found us. I reached the door. Which now just lead to another stone hallway and the memories faded away. Soon I reached another door with a sign beside it announcing my destination.

I entered the throne room. There she standed, Queen Toriel of who I had read in some books. Contrary to the others she was said to be the nicest monster of the Underground. She looked like a goat walking on her hind legs and she wore a long, purple robe and a neat golden crown.

However, in the middle of this big room I saw the throne standing, but otherwise it didn't look like I imagined a throne room. On the ground colorful carpets laid. I spotted a green one with roads on it where you could play with toy cars, a carpet I also have had. At the walls I saw wooden boxes and shelves with board and card games and action figures. Toriel just sat down at a table in a kitchen corner in front of a freshly baked pie. The smell of warm butterscotch and cinnamon made me hungry. At the table most of the other seats were taken by puppets somehow resembling human children by shape and size, but their puppet-like faces made this a creepy scene.

Toriel sat there, her chin resting on her hands, staring at the pie with a frozen face. She just looked ... so damn lonely.

I slowly approach her.

"Queen Toriel?" I remembered I should probably be more respectful and added: "Your majesty?" and went down on one knee, was that correct?

She lifted her head and looked at me. Her eyes filled with surprise. "You are a human?"

She stood up and placed herself in front of me with great souverenity as to be expected of a Queen. Then silence. I didn't know what to say. Was she expecting an answer?

"So you did not came to kill me" she said after a while and turned around, going back to her kitchen corner. "Would you like some pie?"

I said yes, went over and sat down in front of her between two puppets. Despite I knew they were puppets they still gave me the feeling that I sat here in a big family. Noises came into my mind like the lauhging of children and the noise of silverware falling to the ground, slurping, the clumsy scratching of silverware on the plate.

Toriel served me a big piece. "Sadly my folk does not like humans very much. Our history is full of fight and conflict with the humans. Your kind has killed a lot of us. Now since we are trapped in the Underground most of us maintain their hate and brutality against your kind just so they will be prepared in case one of you shows up. They must have treated you very badly, so I'm glad you could preserve your kindness toward us."

I decided it was more polite to stay silent until she asked me something. And she asked: "What brought you here? You want to go home, am I wrong?"

"The books say that no one can leave through the barrier except if they have a human and a monster soul, which I could get by killing a boss monster like you. I hoped that we could find a way to let me go home without me killing you."

This was the second part of my plan and I really, really hoped there was a way. It was so scary to see a living being turning into dust in an instant through your hands, spoiling your skin and clothes with black stains like a marking of shame.

She nodded. "Indeed, the books are old and I do not intend to let them get updated. Please keep this for yourself: The only reason why we are still here is that my folk is not ready to make contact with humans again. Nor can I expect your people to be ready for us. I just want to keep our peace. Sadly I also couldn't tell most them that there is no need to kill humans anymore to gain our freedom."

I had barely eaten half of my piece of pie and was already full. My tummy was not used to this amount of food.

In this moment I startled: Sans stepped in and I heavily fought myself to stay calm. He wouldn't stop me, he couldn't, could he?

He bowed slightly to the Queen. "Your majesty."

"Welcome Sans" she answered and stood up. "What brought you here?" So they knew each other to a significant degree. I expected bad things.

"My human escaped from my shed I noticed" he said. "And when I thought about where they could have gone I found them here. So, I basically could reclaim them as my property and have the last word in wheather they should be allowed to leave." He turned to me. "How about we talk under four eyesockets and see if we can settle this?"

I agreed. I've came too far to risk a failure. What could he possibly want? We moved to the other end of the throne room. Toriel stayed in the kitchen corner and turned her back to us, starting to do kitchen stuff - the washing up to be specific.

"You know I'm one of her strongest supporters and if I claim you as my property she would hardly say no" he whispered with a threatening voice that sent chills down my spine, mostly because of what he said. "But, if you would agree to give me something in exchange for the loss of you, I wouldn't. I would even support you and drop some good words for you. What do you say?"

"What do you want?" I said fighting to keep my breath under control.

He said: "Tell me, where the cube is you have mentioned and I let you go."

That was it, the other thing I had tried to avoid so badly. I considered it. When I was free, I could get help. Staying here my hands were tied. I was too close to the end to turn around.

"You know that the cube plays an important role in a fight between giant robots? That once outside I will tell them where to find it? That the barrier shields the cube, so they can not locate it from the outside and once they're here you should not get yourself caught with it in your hands?"

"So?"

It did not scare him or anything. Even even got more excited about it. Well, at least that meant our deal still stood.

"Okay. So I buried it in a bed of flowers below the hole where we fell down. Very deep, like three feet or so. There was a giant goat man threatening to kill everyone that touched the flowers. So good luck with that or something. Now will you let me go?"

He smiled. "Of course the maleficient Sans keeps his promises." Actually that didn't sound very trustworthy.

We went back to the Queen. She turned to us when we approached her. Sans said: "So, I decided I will not claim the human as my property." Theatralically he turned away from me with a waving scarf. "You would have not accepted my claim anyway given that your word stans higher than mine." He didn't see my angry glance. That little bastard just had tricked me! I didn't knew enough about the monsters' rules to see that coming. It was not my fault, I told myself.

He said goodbye to the Queen. On his way out when he passed me he whispered: "I always get what I want, I told you." Then he was out, leaving me standing like a fool.

With a loud voice she called for a servant. A huge spikey frog with a wizard hat appeared right in the middle of the room. "The Royal Scientist shall bring a monster soul" she commanded. The frog bowed and disappeared.

While we waited we sat down at the table again. I was too full and had to decline a second. She said: "I would like to request something from you. I hope it's not too much. But if you ever are in a position where you have a say, would you please stand in for peace between our kinds?" I wasn't sure how exactly that would look like, but I would probably just do it anyway, so I accepted. Then she asked me about how the surface was today. I noticed it must have been a while since the last human fell down.

Another monster came, a fish woman with a red ponytail and a wide, crazy grin. She brought a strange looking container with a wobbly, glowing white stuff in it. She came to me and looked to the Queen. Toriel nodded. Then the fish woman said to me: "You know that's a prototype. You should be fine though. Hold still."

She stinged a needle-like end of the container into my chest, making me scream. Scared and surprised I saw the white mess entering my body with a crawly feeling, then she pulled the needle out again. I didn't feel much different after the pain faded away.

The fish bowed, grinning in great satisfaction about the result and left.

Queen Toriel led me to a door in the back of the throne room. Behind this I saw what I suspected to be the barrier: Just a big blackness with a blurry tunnel of white through it, everything pulsing in grey once in a while."That's it. You are free to leave, human" she said.

With a last glance on her I stepped through the barrier.


	3. In Search for Optimus Prime

A warm sun was welcoming me and I tasted the air, which was much cleaner and more wholesome than the dust in the cave. Yet I felt empty inside and worried deeply about my brother, hoping I could return soon to free him. I looked down the mountain towards the city and expected to see black smoke or fire, but everything was normal. Maybe it was just my stressed out mind or I couldn't just see anything like that from this distance.

Then suddenly something inside of me started to cry. I realized it was the monster soul. I didn't welcome those sudden interruption in my flow of thoughts.

"Hey, little buddy. What's the matter?" I asked in my mind with a friendly tone.

The crying came from a high pitched voice, so I assumed it belonged to a small monster.

"I ... I'm sorry. I never thought I would leave the Underground" it said. "This is so ... so ..."

It cried some more. And it aready started to become annoying. It wouldn't keep on crying in my mind for the rest of my life, would it?? That was a terrible thought. I would likely shoot myself before bearing that. So I decided to be nice and comforting and to hide any negative feelings.

"You probably had a hard life down there, hadn't you? Don't worry, it's over now. It's ... it's okay to cry." As long as it would stop soon. "Come back to me if you want to talk about something" I added.

I made my way to the city and the monster really stopped crying. It calmed down to an occasional sniffing until it stopped completely.

The city was surprisingly calm and normal, people were running around and cars were driving as usual, not as I expected. I have had nightmare imaginations of the worst, like a destroyed city, robots running around killing everyone, but this? How did this make any sense?

Before I went home I returned to the place where I had lastly seen them. Some of the buildings were heavily damaged and the area around them was locked. Some construction workers ran around, cleanedup bricks and glass that laid on the street.

I went close to the blocks, speaking to a construction worker who was busy close to me. "Excuse me? What happened to the robots?"

He looked at me as if I was crazy. "Which robots? We had those terror attacks recently. With bombs, you know. Are you saying they used robots?"

"Eh, no, sorry. There was a thunderstorm that day and I thought I had seen ... never mind, it was probably terrorists."

"Yeah? Then you should stop thinking. You're obviously not good at it." While busy the work took him away from me and I heard him talking quietly to himself: "Robots, stupid, the Youth is watching too many action movies ..."

I had to fight my anger down and to remind myself I better sticked to the official version or else I would raise questions I better not answered.

I went to the river, the place where this highly damaged robot fell from the sky and gave me the cube before he disappeared. If he had survived he would most likely come back here. He had told me to bring the cube to an "Optimus Prime", but I had no idea where he (or she?) was, yet alone how he looked like.

In the robots' fight in the sky I saw some of them transforming to different vehicles. Probably that's why the official version was about terrorism. And I came to the conclusion that they were hiding as those, most likely in the city, the place where they last saw the cube. The question just was how I could find them.

"It's so much freedom. My family would have liked it here" the monster soul within me said and started to cry again. Oh please, don't. It looked like I had to get used to occasional interruptes from inside sooner or later. I would rather not have to.

"You miss them very much, don't you?" I asked unnecessarily. "I'm sorry, I can't do anything to replace them or something, but I think they are fine whereever they're living."

It sniffed some more and fell silent again. "Sorry for crying all the time. We're calling ourselves Moonies, because we are white like the moon and we are said to be a bit crazy, but actually we are just very sensitive. Other monsters call us Crymoons since ... since ..." It swallowed the words, at least that was the impression I had. It couldn't talk about it.

I picked up on the description of its kind it gave: "Do you mean white and small, with butterfly like wings and tear marks on the face?" My idea was to distract it. "I think I've ... eh, seen one of your kind in Ruin's Home." I better not said that it had been one of my victims. Now I felt even worse for it, but I had no choice back then.

"I thought you humans were all mean and you would hate us monsters. But you are actually nice" the monster said in my head. 

"Yes, there was probably a lot of misunderstanding between our people." Help.

But at least the chat was distracting Moony - without a better name I decided to call it that - so it didn't cry anymore and opened up a bit.

 

In this night, the first night I slept in my own bed after a long time I had a nightmare. I found myself in Sans's shed, tied to the camp bed, so tight I couldn't move. He was standing above me, with a wide, creepy smile and a knife.

"What ... What do you want? Just tell me what you want already!" I begged with a high-pitched voice. I looked down my body which was white and small, with arms so tiny they looked lost between the loops of the rope.

My body was highly damaged. I saw cuts everywhere, on arms, legs and torso. Because I was a monster they didn't bleed, instead at the edges I saw the matter was falling to dust, just like when I killed them in Ruin's Home, just way slower. I was about to die, but I could be saved, however I couldn't save myself, it was so hopeless. I started to cry and felt big tears burning my skin as they rolled down my face.

"Oh, I don't know" he said with a voice that said how well damn he knew. His hands grabbed my wings from my back and bend them towards him so I could see the ends of them, beautiful white wings, so small and fragile.

"No, please don't!" I begged and cried. "Please don't cut my wings, I need them, I'm lost without them, please don't, I do everything you want, just please don't."

He looked me straight in the eyes and I couldn't stand the glare of his dark and deep eyesockets, as if an abyss was staring back into my soul and I looked down. Please, don't be offended, I'm still listening, I just can't, I can't.

He looked to the side, as if he was thinking. "Well, if there was another way from preventing you from escaping, a PROMISE for instance, then I wouldn't need to consider it."

"Yes, yes, I promise you everything, just don't cut my wings" I cried with tears of hope and relieve.

 

My fast beating heart and heavy breathing woke me up. I crawled out of my bed and looked at my hands and legs while the feeling of being small and having wings still remainded from the dream. I went to the kitchen to drink some water and to calm down.

"Did you make this dream?" I asked the monster with a bit of anger in my inner voice. I couldn't pretend to be nice at the moment, I had a real reason to be upset.

"It was a memory. I wanted to show you, show you ..." They couldn't say the words and just continued with: "It was so terrible. We all had to promise him to serve him, to do whatever he wants whenever he wants. He was leaving us alone most of the time and we could return to our homes, but he could show up or call anytime with orders."

The monster wasn't crying nearly as much as when we left the cave. Instead, I was in a way worse mood than before. "But he captured my brother" I said worried.

"I ... I'm sorry for your brother. Good you could escape, he sometimes uses family members against each other ..."

"My brother wanted me to leave."

"Are ... are you sure ma... Sans didn't tell him to tell you that?"

"Just stop alread!" I shouted in my room and teared my hair. I tried to remember what had happened before he had told me to leave, but I wasn't there for hours, of course they could have ... but that still wouldn't mean it wasn't his idea, it sounded so much like him. He was often worried about me, as much as I was about him. No, I was just still nervous from the nightmare. I didn't want to think about it anymore.

"He's strong, he will be fine" I said in my mind with a more relaxed voice. More to conceal myself. After this nightmare it was hard to believe. "Please stop talking about that."

 

The next day I went down to the riverbank again, the same place. Maybe today some of them would show up. I sat there for hours, thinking about what to do. The monster seemed to relax, too, relatively spoken.

"It's beautiful" it said after some time. For me it was just a boring river, with fish and ships, bridges and a skyline, just like every river thet flew through a city. I heard cars driving over the nearest bridge far away and occadionally a passenger passed by behind me on the footway. But for a being that had never seen the sun sparkling on a huge water surface like that it was another story.

As expected nothing happened and I had decided where I continued my search. I had remembered a symbol on that robot, so I walked around every street and parking place I spotted and searched for one of that.

"What are you doing?" the monster asked. I never thought it would. It had been so busy drowing itself in its own sadness that it hadn't noticed anything else.

"Some weeks ago a robot gave me a cube, telling me that there was one of them who needs to receive it. I hid the cube in the Underground, so now I'm searching for that one to tell him where to find it."

"Does ... does that mean we are returning? To the Underground?" I heard its voice losing all its new found safety.

"No, no" I quickly added. "I mean, if they insist that I show them the place, then I might escort them, but it's somewhere else in the Underground. We're not returning to Sans." My plan was that he wouldn't dare to dig out the cube. The flower bed was not that small and I didn't tell him where exactly I buried it. And if he tried the giant goat man would kill him.

And, even in the unlikely case he got his hands on the cube, the robots were ten times his size and would just take it from him. This was the smallest of my problems.

"Please don't. We ... we would never ever leave again."

"Don't worry" I answered with confidence.

I discovered a car, that had the same symbol as the robot on the hood and on the steering wheel. Could it be? Was it my lucky day?

I peeked left and right if there was no passenger nearby.

"Hello. I know what you are" I said and felt riddiculous for speaking with a car. "I'm looking for Optimus Prime. Do you know where I can find him?"

I waited. There was no reaction. I added: "Please, it's important."

Still nothing. Moony said: "That's a normal car."

I thought: "But it has the same symbol on it."

The monster replied: "Monsters can see souls. I assure you it's not alive."

"But what if those robots have no soul?"

It kept silent. Yeah, that's what I thought. Monsters have never met an intelligent robot, so what can they know about them.

"Come back to me if you want to talk" I said to the car. Then I knocked on the hood and at the windows to check if it would result in a reaction, finally I walked away. Moony was right, this was just a normal car and I was behaving stupidly.

 

Back at home I booted my computer and searched for scrap yards in this area. I started writing down addresses, phone numbers and opening times. While immersed in this task my phone disturbed me. I picked it up.

It was my brother's mom. Some of our friends must have seen me. There were eyes and ears everywhere. Or maybe she tried to call me every once in a while just in case.

She showered me in words. "So you are back. He was leaving weeks ago to meet you, nobody has heard of you two in weeks, where are you, can you tell him to call me immediately when he is back home? I'm so worried, how can he do this to his mother. I have called the police, they are searching for him everywhere ..."

I didn't know what to say. I imagined her asking: "Is he alive?" I would say yes. Then: "Is he fine?" And I ... I would ...

I hung up. No, I couldn't tell her anything. Should I tell her, tell the police about the Underground full of monsters? How crazy. No, the only way to get him back was to find this Optimist thing.

When the phone rang again, I picked it up, said: "I will bring him back, just give me some time", then I hung up and pulled the cable.

Moony said: "She will come to your door to get her answers."

"Nah", I replied. "She doesn't know my address." Besides, my plan was to bring him back before she had any chance to find me. I had no time to worry about yet another person.

Then I thought how stupid it must be for an intelligent robot to hide on a scrap yard. Either they were in danger to get scrapped or they had to give out their identity to save themselves. If I was a robot I wouldn't hide there. So I crumbled the piece of paper with my notes and threw it away.

 

This night Moony sent me a dream again, which of course I didn't notice as I was dreaming.

I was a monster again, flying towards Sans, who was standing in front of their house. The desert wind was blowing me around like a leaf, but somehow I managed to land. I started to cry.

"Aww, what's the matter my friend? C'mere."

Scared I jumped backwards, but Sans was faster. He picked me up and held me gently, like a lion that was cuddling with a lamb he was about to eat. Sans was petting my head and I was crying even more helplessly, because I couldn't stand it and was not able to prevent this. "Do you have some news for me?" he asked and all I wished for was that he would stop.

"No, please, let me down."

"The tears are starting to leave dark marks on your face. Are you sure it's nothing?"

"I ... I don't know ..."

"C'mon, you know you can tell me anything."

"Well ... the wind was so strong, I was blown into a cave and hit my head on a stone and I was scared and started to cry."

"So what? Anything of interest in there for me? Monsters, artifacts, anything?"

"N... no, just a creepy, empty cave."

The petting stopped. The tips of his boney fingers pierced my skin and I screamed.

"I'm not your therapist. Do you have some REAL problems?"

"No, no, please let me go!"

He throw me hard on the ground. Looked down on me, shook his head. "After all I did to you, the biggest thing that bothers you is a stupid empty cave. You are so weak."

"I ... I'm sorry, master, I'm not worthy."

"Get lost."

I bowed and flew home as fast as I could to hide in my bed. I could hardly stop crying.

 

The next time I saw myself approaching Sans I had cried a lot and I felt the paths the tears had taken burning on my face. I couldn't even remember what I was crying about.

"Aww, little buddy, of course you can tell me anything. What is it this time?"

"No ... nothing. Just ... just my own tiny problems."

"Really? You know you have to tell me if there's something important for me? Or else I find out otherwise and then you will have a REAL problem."

"Nothing important, I swear."

He nodded and reached out for my head. I looked down while I had to take his pets.

"You are still weak and a shame, but at least you're useful."

 

After I woke up I realized what I had witnessed and blamed the monster. "I told you to not play with my mind again. I'm glad I made it out of that place."

"I ... I'm sorry, I thought it would make it better if I showed you ... Sans was more violent at the beginning and then got more like friendly and manipulative towards me. I mean it doesn't need to become like the first dream for your brother."

"No, that doesn't make anything better" I said depressed. "I don't know, I don't need to know what is happening to him right now and maybe you're worrying me for nothing."

Instead of an answer it started to cry, mumbling "sorry, sorry" in between.

I tried to be more soothing. "It's ... it's okay" I forced myself to say in my mind. "You just wanted to help, you didn't hurt anyone, just stop it and we're good."

With some more sniffs it stopped after a while. Right in time I finished my drink and was ready to take some more sleep. But in the meantime I had also decided that it couldn't go on this way.

"Let me tell you something" I said in my mind. "Once my brother and me visited a climbing park. At the very last obstacle which he just repeated, because the trainer had explained him another way to beat it, he fell down and broke his fibula, which we didn't knew at that point. He just got up again, performed some kicks in the air and said he was fine. We even walked halfway back home, before his calf had swollen so much he couldn't walk anymore. What I want to say is that he is very tough and if I would see someone like him would cry, I would be very deeply worried. I would expect someone cries when in an immense pain or subject of a death threat. The fact that you are crying so much ... you see, it's making me worried, but then it's just about things you think or feel and I can do nothing about them ..."

I wondered if I had myself clear enough or if I should add something. At least Moony didn't start to cry again. After a while it said: "I know what you're saying: That I'm crying for nothing."

Carefully I added: "Maybe Sans was just, eh, worried in the same way as me when he saw you crying?"

I heard it sniffing again and sent a silent fervent prayer when it whimpered: "I know, I know I do, but I'm so sensitive, I can't control it. It's just coming out of me. Sorry, so sorry. I'll try to pull myslf together."

 

Although I didn't know if it was of any use I kept on searching. I went down to the river - nothing there as usual - and got bored really quickly.

"How did you die by the way?" I was wondering while I was walking beneath a row of parked cars.

"I don't know" Moony answered. "The last thing I remember is Sans punishing me. Then I woke up in your body."

I told it my view of the story, how the fish lady brought it in a syringe.

"The Royal Scientist is friends with Sans's brother Papyrus" Moony said. "We were bringing her deliveries once in a while."

Okay, maybe Sans wasn't lying when he said ...

While I was thinking a car stopped beside me and before I could react I was pulled inside. The door closed and we quickly accelerated to a normal driving speed.

I heard Moony inside of me gasping, I mean the bodyless equivalent of it.

Scared in the first moment I looked around to see who was kidnapping me, but the driver seat was empty. When the car itself started to speak I realized with relief that I had found them. Or they had found me to be clear.

"I'm observing you for a while now. Why are you looking for us?" he said with a manly voice.

I tried to get more information about who I was taking to. I didn't remember seeing a car like this - not that I was very good in telling them apart from each other with other criteria than the color. Also I didn't see any symbol on the steering wheel. There went my theory of how I could tell them apart from normal vehicles.

"I saw you fighting at the attacks some weeks ago, but the people say it was done by terrorist."

"Yes, we're hiding" he said.

I heared Moony's voice: "I don't trust him. He's hiding something."

I joked: "You mean beside himself?" and added: "What should I do? I need to save my brother soon somehow." But Moony had said it was very sensitive and it couldn't hurt to be a bit careful. So I just say: "I have a message for Optimus Prime."

"What message?"

"Sorry, only for him in person."

He was quite for a while while houses are passing by and we're driving into another quiet street.

"Okay, I will let him know."

He stopped and the door opened. "I will pick you up when he arrives in town."

"Thanks, but ..." I wanted to ask for his name, but in this moment I was thrown out and the car leaft without another word.

Moony sighed relieved. And after a while it added: "Besides, it did have a soul."

 

Some days later when I was just bringing some waste paper away, he found me again, pulled me inside with some robotic appendages as I now saw, while I dropped all the paper onto the street. Quickly we drove away. I felt Moony, like ... flying around terrified, but that was just in my mind. Like a feeling from a dream when in reality there was nothing. However, I was pretty calm. Moony was just overreacting, which didn't affect me. How could I take someone seriously who was scared by an empty cave.

"Optimus Prime is waiting for you" he said.

I joked: "You could've just called, you know?" But I got no reaction. How rude. While Moony kinda settled down, saying nothing.

We drove through the city, always very close at the speed limit, usually passing traffic lights in the very last moment before they turned red. Then we reached the city borders and passed lonely houses, fields and some trees.

Outside the city we drove into a forest, where after some time we reached a clearing. The car stopped and opened the door to leave me out. There he was, I assumed. A giant red and blue robot, standing there with all his authority within a group of more robots, all of them looking down on me. I felt small and intimidated. At least they were less scary than in those night, with all those weapons and all that noise and destruction. I stepped towards him.

"Optimus Prime" I said and he nodded. I couldn't wait to get the words out and to be done with my mission.

"What message do you have for me?"

So I told him: "Some weeks ago when there was the storm, I was standing at the river when I saw robots fighting each other in the dark clouds. One of them fell down into the river and crawled up onto the promenade beside me. When he saw me he reached out for me and gave me a cube. He said: 'Protect this with your life. Bring it to Optimus Prime.'" Then I said I didn't knew how and the robot said he was trusting me before he got unconscious and glided back into the water. It must have been a decision out of desperation. Still I took the job seriously. But there was no need to mention this part of the story now.

"And where is the Allspark now?" Optimus Prime asked.

I said: "I ran to a mountain where I fell into a cave. The cave is surrounded by a barrier that shields everything that tries to go out, that's why you couldn't locate it there." I roughly pointed to the direction I thought. "It's east from the city, not very far."

The robot laughed, which sounded odd. Then he transformed, but not to a car or another vehicle. His face opened and he stared at me with red glowing eyes. The Moony inside of me gasped and was too scared to make any other noise, as if someone could hear it inside of me anyway.

"I'm Megatron. And now you're coming with me."

Before I could realize with a chill running down my spine that I had been trapped, he grabbed me. All the robots transformed into different flying crafts and we made our way to the Underground.


	4. A New World

At the very same cave entrance my brother and me had first fallen in we stopped. Moony had already lost its self-control and cried again, but it was very quiet with it. I wasn't sure if it was of fear or because of me, because I had stated that I didn't like it.

I needed some time to come up with a plan. Because I assumed that Sans had already retrieved the cube, I didn't mind to inform the robots: "I buried the Allspark below that hole in a bed of flowers."

With their giant arms they reached into the cave and ripped out parts of the mountain until the hole was big enough they could all enter the Underground. Their giant bodies shook the earth as they landed and their feet crushed walls and houses in Ruin's Home. Sorry, sorry dear monsters I thought and somehow I felt Moony's pain. Was its kind and family living somewhere in there?

Megatron lifted the whole flowerbed with one hand - no cube as I noticed with relieve. And fear. He turned to me: "There is no Allspark here and we are not locating it anywhere in the mountain. For lying to me you shall be crushed, filthy little creature."

His hand around my body closed further.

"Then you will never get it!" I shouted and the movement stopped. "I wasn't lying and you know that. You located the Allspark until this mountain and lost the signal, right? I buried it here, but someone must have found it. I know this place. So if you would put me down and give me some time to look around, I'll find it for you."

He was staring at me with his red glowing eyes I couldn't really keep eye contact with, as the light seemed to burn into my soul. He seemed to consider the option. "If you run away, I will crush your whole species" he said, putting me down.

"I need to look around in the desert area" I said, fearing that going there without permission could be misunderstood as escape.

Roughly I was put to the desert, But at least on hard ground and not in quick sand.

Megatron gave orders, sending the other robots to also look around. They noticed the barrier that prevented them from leaving the mountain, but Megatron said they will destroy it with the Allspark. All of this was not of my concern at the moment.

"This is terrible, so terrible" Moony mumbled. "What have we done. We are all doomed."

"It's not over before it's over" I replied without further wasting my time with thinking about what could happen. 

I walked through the desert, upright and on a well-used path, not as I was used to. I passed thorn bushes on the one side and dried grass on the other until I reached the small town. I saw no-one. In the town I saw doors, curtains and shutters closed - the monsters had retreated into their houses, at least the ones who lived in houses.

I went to the house of the skeleton brothers and knocked at their door. Waited. Knocked again. Their shutters were still open, so I walked around the house and peeked in - nobody was there, at least as far as I could see. The door to the cellar was locked. So I went over to the shed, just to be sure. It was unlocked and the chains laid loose on the ground. There was no trace that anybody had been trapped here lately. Where could they have gone?

I went over to one of the other houses. Shy eyes were following my steps through the curtains. Some of them disappeared as I approached, but they remembered me, they didn't really fear me. I knocked at the door and asked: "Hi, it's me, the human of Sans. Would you tell me where I can find him?" I waited, but got no answer. So I added: "You know I would really like to know and it might help to solve this situation?" Still no answer.

"They are scared and they don't like you" Moony said.

"Oh, they're not hating me?" I replied in surprise. But it didn't help me either.

I said out aloud: "Fine, I will find it out on my own" and turned around.

In this moment the door opened by an inch and I heard a voice from the inside: "We don't know. They suddenly disappeared some days ago, the two skeletons and the other human, without a hint or any trace. Nobody saw them leaving." I turned back to see who spoke to me, but the door was closed before I finished my movement.

I wanted to have a look into the cellar, so I searched around the - very clean and tidy - house for a key, but I found none. I had no other choice but to ask one of the robots to open the door for me - he smashed it with his fist and splints of wood and color flew everywhere.

The cellar was a tiled room, tidy but not as clean as the main part of the house. In fact it was so dusty that I could spot a much cleaner and less dusty, reactangular spot on the ground and I deducted that something had stood there for a long time and had recently changed the place. I found a desk and its drawers were full of notes and blueprints. I took some and sat down, taking my time to look through them. I rarely understood anything of the drawings and equations. The robots would probably understand, but on no consideration I would show them.

What I understood was that it was about a machine, a big machine. Judging the drawings its size could fit the bright spot on the ground. I scrolled through the pages. The equations told me nothing and the handwriting consisted of strange symbols of a foreign language I had never seen before. So all I could make any sense of were the pictures. I saw drawings of the whole machine from different angles. Other drawings showed some parts or somehow explained one of the components, which for me was a section of this weird text around a drawing of that part, along with some lines and arrows sometimes.

Suddenly I heard a whirring noise. It started quietly and become louder. I looked up from the notes and looked around, but could not locate it. It came from somewhere inside this room, but I couln't see any possible source. Suddenly a machine appeared inside the room directly on the bright spot, covering it perfectly. The machine was shaped like an upright standing hollow box with big window-like holes, just like in the drawings. It reminded me loosely of a telephone box.

Something differed from the drawings: Within the machine someone stood I knew very well.

"Bro!" I shouted excited, dropped the sheets I was currently looking through onto the desk and ran to the machine, trying to open it. "How are you? Are you alright? Are you hurt?" I noticed he was chained to the frame inside the machine, but beside that he looked fairly well and I didn't spot any injuries.

"God, I'm so glad to see you "he said. "The small skeleton lost his mind. He's retrieving me all the time to make me watch him killing or something."

This didn't make any sense to me, but anyway, it didn't matter at the moment. "Where is the cube? Is it with them?"

He nodded: "Yes, it's on the other half of the machine. It's powering the machine." Other half? I looked to the ground for some wires, but there weren't any. Neither did I see a trace of another half on the ground, nor did I in the notes. Did he mean that the other half was at the other place?

"How would that work?"

He laughed in an unhappy way. "I couldn't even tell you how a computer works, so don't ask me. This is all just weird."

What was this machine anyway? Some kind of teleporter I supposed. But where did it lead to? And most importantly: How could this be opened and where was the key to his chains? I suspected Sans had it.

I started to hear the whirring noise again, quickly becoming louder. I assumed the machine was activated again.

"Quick, step back!" he said. "They're retrieving me again."

"No" I replied and stepped onto the machine from the outside, tightly grapping the frame. Before my brother (or Moony) could protest, we disappeared along with the machine.

From one eyeblink to another I found myself in a completely new place. This looked like a throne room, but not the one from Toriel or another I had ever seen. A red throne stood on a gallery in the middle of a white tiled, giant room. The small skeleton stood in front of the throne, wearing a crown, a majestic coat and a cepter - megalomania at its best. At the stairs to his feet I saw two monsters lying on the ground, a snail wearing some armor and the harpy version of a robin, both heavily injured. Sans summoned some bones that pierced them, instantly turning them to dust.

Moony lost it. I felt it heavily shaking, sinking down and crying in silence.

"Calm down, nothing happened to us. He doesn't even know you're here."

I felt a nod of acknowledgement, but no other change. Moony understood, but couldn't control itself.

Beside the machine I saw the rumored other half, which was basically a base with some controls where the Allspark was mounted. Papyrus stood there, operating the machine.

On one side of the throne room I saw two big cages, each one containing a monster. One was looking like an attractive naked woman with blue hair and horns on her head. She had a big red cloth with her and was floating with it through the cage while the cloth was covering her private parts seemingly conincidentially all the time. She looked bored and leaned backwards with her arms folded behind her neck.

In the other cage there was something looking like a corpse that had laid in a desert for a long time, wearing a coat and supporting the weight of his bent back with a walking stick.

My presence did not stay unnoticed for long. Sans saw me, smiled - his creepy smile that always seemed to hide something - and came down the stairs of the throne with swinging hips. I noticed his crown was a bit too big for his head, so he had to wear it askew. While he came down the crown nearly slipped in front of his eyes, so he had to push it back upwards. For a moment it upsetted him, but he managed to keep his facade and put a confident smile back on. This was so funny, I suppressed a chuckle. I felt Moony hiding itself deep within my mind, if that was the right description. "Human" Sans said, "so nice of you to visit me. Too bad I only need one of you."

I stepped off the machine and took some steps forward to him. "I want my brother back. And the Allspark."

Something had changed about him since we had last met. Like his aura, if there was something like that. As there was dark energy floating around him unseen, which made me feel weak and small. I didn't think I stood a chance against him anymore. Hm, that was probably just an illusion. His body was the same and I was physically bigger and stronger than him. It was just bones after all.

"Oh, that means you finally returned with the owners as you had promised." He turned away from me snubbing and not caring and at the same time showing that he didn't fear me. "I need them both."

I said: "My brother's family is missing him and the robots are locked up in the Underground. They will destroy everything to find the Allspark." As if this was something Sans would care about. While looking around I asked: "Where is this place anyway?"

Quickly Sans turned to me, his coat waved. "Oh, the question is not 'where', but 'when'." He grinned. "With the time machine we traveled 1013 years into the future, the future of YOUR world. Here are no humans anymore, except you two of course. The calendar here writes year 1001, that means" he made a threatralic break to increase the tension and spread his arms in revelation, "that means that at some point in the next few years the humans of your world get extinct and we monster get to rule the world. Enjoy your life as long as you can. And now you're going back." He turned his head to the side, pointing with his cepter. "Papyrus, bring the other end point of the machine to a safe place."

Papyrus made a step towards me. "No!" I shouted, while Moony in fear shouted at the same time and in affect we were shooting some magical bullets at Papyrus. They hit him. He showed no reaction. He didn't even got a scratch.

"Oh congrats" I thought, rolling my eyes in my mind. "You just let them know that you're here."

Sans laughed: "Oh, looks like you received the weakest monster soul of the Underground. A Moony, right? One of my former slaves. How fitting. But if you can't even scratch my brother, you would not even stand a chance against ME."

Moony cried, whimpering excuses.

Papyrus stood there, raising his hands in conciliation. "Please, human. Do not resist. Just go into the machine."

"No." I was still not trusting them and smelled a trap, but I couldn't really do anything here. I couldn't mess with both of them at the same time. I went to the machine, stepping on it from the outside as I had done before.

Papyrus opened the machine's door. "You shouldn't do that. It's dangerous to travel time on the outside."

"I don't believe you."

Moony told me to not take the risk. But I looked onto the Allspark on its base, which wasn't that small. Were they letting me think that three beings and those part all traveled inside the machine? While I already successfully traveled outside once?

"Fine" he said slightly affronted and stepped into the machine, where he reached around to activate some controls on the other outside. Interesting. I had seen controls in the drawings on this machine and seeing Papyrus operating it on the Allspark base part confused me. But it looked like there were controls at both parts.

The whirring started and soon we found ourselves again back in the cellar.

Papyrus took a slightly longer look at the broken door or maybe he was just thinking, but before I could do anything we found ourselves in another room, a room with greenish tiles and full of boxes. Papyrus went to the door and checked that it was locked. He made no move to open it.

"What?" I asked. "You really trapped me again?"

He turned to me and winked. "You only cause us trouble if you're running around. This is the best for everyone."

"No!" I shouted. "The leader of the robots has a short fuse. He will punch the Underground to pieces as soon as he notices I'm gone."

"And that's the one you wanted to give a huge energy source?" he replied untouched.

"No, I wanted ... " My hand formed a fist in anger about myself. "They tricked me." I felt heat rising to my face from embarassement.

"Huh, no surprise. Wouldn't even surprise me if you were the cause for mankinds downfall." He winked again. "Whatever, I see what I can do. Do what you want." From one moment to another he disappeared, leaving me in this locked room with my chained brother.


	5. Leaving Behind

This was a hopeless situation, but not a reason for me to give up. I went to the door and "we" shot some magic bullets at the lock.

"S... Sorry" the monster inside me interrupted. "My bullets are too weak to damage physical objects."

Too bad. I needed to find another way.

My brother suggested: "Search in the boxes. If you can find a wire, a paperclip or something, I can open my chains and the door."

Instantly I started searching. The first box was full of tapes. The second contained waved children's books as if they had been wet at some point. In the third I found toys: stuffed animals, lego bricks, wooden blocks. I took a closer look on the toy cars, seeing if they contained something useful.

I sighed about the uselessness of the stuff I found, barely listening to my brother. "Wait, I have an idea" I suddenly said and went to the time machine. With what I had read in the notes I now knew how to activate it and grapped the frame again.

When the machine started its whirring sound, I prepared myself to dodge Sans attacks and to run out of the room, where somewhere in the world I would find a wire. But when we appeared in the throne room Sans was gone. I looked around to make sure and all I saw was the crown, coat and cepter lying on a pile near the throne.

Holy moly, was he dead? Not that it would make me sad or anything. It just came so ... sudden.

Moony fell into a cold silence.

I turned to the two monsters in the cages and asked with a quiet voice: "Where did Sans go?" Maybe I was wrong and he had just ... put the job down. Literally.

The corpse answered: "A god came in and killed him. But because at that time no human was in this world, he respawned at the place of his initial creation."

The naked woman, still bored, added: "That would be in our dungeon. Two hours south from here."

I was confused: "What do we have to do with that?"

The corpse raised a finger like a teacher explaining something to kids: "This, dear visitors, is a monsters' world." He stressed the words VISITORS and MONSTERS. "As long as we all have the same amount of DETERMINATION - which is none - we all have the same power over the timeline and no-one has to die, but if one of you humans is here ..."

He was interrupted by the female one: "Oh, cut down on that scientific crap. He says if no human is here, we respawn after death. If a human is in this world, death is permanent."

"Yes" the corpse confirmed and winked with a somehow friendly smile. "So we would really appreciate it if you would leave this world soon and never ever return. It's nothing personal."

I had to let this sink in and didn't know what to say. While I could be considered responsible for the death of monsters by my own hands or indirectly by bringing the robots into the Underground, being responsible for deaths of monsters by my sheer existence was just ... rough. 

I said: "Then please help to free my brother. He is chained to the time machine."

The female turned around, floating through the cage, resting her head on her hand, whatever was resting about that when she was floating. "Sans has the key. We can't do anything for you."

I replied: "We only need a piece of wire. A paperclip or a key ring for example."

The corpse waved to me to come closer. In surprise I watched how in the palms of his hands a small wire appeared and I wondered: What else could he summon? How strong was he? Was that the reason Sans didn't kill him?

I thanked him and brought the wire to my brother, who started to pick the locks of his chain.

While he was busy I talked to the corpse, asking if he would help me to adjust the time machine to some hours before, which would give us more time.

"No" was his answer. "You shouldn't mess with a timeline if you're not really, really sure what you're doing."

Too bad I hadn't figured out from the notes how to do that. All the possibilities I had seen in different movies. Well, the same movies that also showed what could go wrong with a time machine. With all that knowledge I would do better. How disappointing.

"Just some hours, before the robots arrive." I begged. "We could bring the Allspark out before they notice."

"And what do you think happens if - a few hours later - the time machine from before appears at the very same spot this one is already standing?"

I stared at him, trying to imagine the situation and to find an answer.

"Yeah" he said. "That's the reason it's designed to travel back and forth by the same amount of time."

I had to admit he was right. I couldn't argue with that.

I was considering taking the Allspark back with us anyway. But the robots would sense it and find it. It would be the best to keep it here for a while longer.

A golem made of metal entered the throne room and took its slow and heavy steps toward the machine. It didn't seem to be dangerous and I wondered what it wanted. Then it stopped and spoke with a tinny voice: "I'm here to retrieve the Allspark." Not doing anything as if asking for permission.

I said: "You can't have it yet. We need it to get home. And to bring the skeleton brothers together." I figured if one would be left in one world or better to say time and one in the other there was a 100 percent chance that I was in a world with a skeleton who was very, very mad at me.

The golem answered: "Then I'll wait a little bit longer." It moved to the side of the room, positioning itself as it was part of the rooms decoration.

I didn't bother for long. What a strange world this was. I would love to explore it, but I wouldn't like to be responsible for thousands of deaths.

When my brother got rid of the chains - he was out of training as it took him several minutes - he went to the cages to free the monsters, too.

"No, no!" The corpse man declined. "He doesn't need to know you were here." The woman added annoyed: "Just leave already, we will be fine."

My brother looked at me questioning.

Moony let me know: "They are strong and confident."

So I said: "If they say so, then okay."

"Well, then let's go" he said and we entered the time machine, back to our world. One day I would tell him about my new secret passenger.

In the green tiled room while he was picking the door I had some time to search through the other boxes to find something useful, but it looked badly.

"So what's the plan?" he asked while he was busy.

"The usual" I answered.

He laughed: "So just improvising. Fine for me."

While still looking through the boxes, I specified: "And if it goes well, we head for the Queen's castle to leave the Underground."

"I don't know any Queen's castle, so you tell me then where to go" he replied and I heard the clicking that indicated the open door.

Carefully we peeked out of the door. The floor was covered with the same green tiles and lighted by the same dimished lights. We saw more doors, one black screen to every side at the wall. A teddy bear with a ripped off arm. I saw a spot on the bright wall that looked like old blood to me, but in this light and at those distance it was hard to tell. And it couldn't be or could it? This was all just a creepy place. Both sides of the floor ended around corners.

"Left or right?" he asked with hand signs - what a pro, went to sneak mode as long as we didn't know who or what was roaming around here. But I had never been here before or heard of a place like this. I didn't even know in which part of the Underground we were here.

So I pointed to him, pointed to the doors to the left one after another and to the corner, then I pointed to myself and to the right. He understood that I wanted him to scout this side while I would take the other one and nodded.

Because the other doors were locked, too, I tried to figure out where they lead by peeking through the keyholes and through the gap between floor and ground, but this gave me more questions than answers: One was an old bathroom where I saw a shower and the air smelled mouldy. 

I passed one of the black screens and noticed it was actually showing some small white letters written on them: "They are confused. I told them that here are greater powers that can reset. Here they are under my control." Then suddenly it switched off, so I couldn't read the rest of it. What was this supposed to mean? Was it talking about us? We were confused, but the rest didn't apply to us. Probably it was about someone else who has been down here.

The next room I peeked in was like a students room with old writing utensils on a desk in front of two chairs. One reminded me of a small kitchen where I saw a sink and some tubes. At least I could make sure that no living surprises would come out of the rooms. Then I peeked around the corner and saw just more doors and another corner in the distance.

Just before I decided to turn back I spotted an odd point in the distant corner, which when my eyes had adpated to the distance looked like a cam. I raised my eyes in the corner where I was and found another one. I couldn't tell if it was recording, though. It gave me an eerie feeling.

I turned my head to see how far my brother had come and he was just peeking around his corner. While he turned around and waved at me I spotted another cam above his head.

I ran to him and whispered: "Just another corner behind that one" and pointed to where I came from.

"Here the corridor makes a fork" he replied. "You think we should go that way?"

"Yes" I nodded, "and here are cams everywhere, don't look" I added quietly and pointed to his corner as if it was part of what I said before.

He understood and we just went ahead like nothing happened. With steps as quietly and quick as possible we moved to the fork and peeked around. With rolling eyes I spotted another corridor with more doors and another corner at its end. That was when I heard a sound. A sound of something soft, heavy, maybe slimy slid over the floor. My brother and I looked at each other. I just decided to follow this corridor and we went forward.

Just when we went around the next corner, I had a strange feeling. Like a strong déjà-vu, but I wasn't actually in the mood for that, I mean I usually had no déjà-vu of anything I had just done some seconds ago. But here we were and this was corridor with a fork as we had just seen before. Just to make sure, because I started to doubt my mind I was looking behind.

There was no fork at the end of the corridor, just another corner. The creepy noise was louder than before. When I moved some steps, I saw the very same blood stain again that I had seen when we first left the room.

"Hey, where are you going?" he whispered and came after me.

"That's the first corridor again!" I replied close to panic.

"No?"

"Look." I went to the door of our room and opened it. "Here's the time machine."

He followed me to see it with his own eyes. "That's not possible." He stared at it, not comprehending.

The increasing volume of the scratching sound made me nervous. "Go in!" I whispered and silently closed the door behind us.

While we waited and listened at the door, the noise now more quiet through the door became louder again. I made him some signs to go into the time machine and I prepared to switch it on if something dangerous would enter the room.

We stared at the door as we heard the noise now coming from the corridor in front of the door. My fingers twitched nervously and all my attention was focused on the door. I noticed how my brother formed fists, ready to fight.

The noise scratched the tiles, now it was clearly on the other side of the door. It stopped. I held my breath. Then it started again. It moved on. It got quieter again. Seems as it didn't know the door was open. Lucky we.

I realized I was still holding my breath and had to remind me to breath again.

When I couldn't hear the noise again and my nerves had calmed down a bit, I whispered: "Let's follow that corridor again. But this time I want you to open a door behind every corner, so we can hide in those rooms just in case."

Before we could go he grabbed my hand. My fingers were cold and shaky. "Are you alright?" he asked.

I nodded and escaped his grip, leaving the room again.

I noticed that Moony has been unusually quiet and asked it the same.

To my surprise it was in much better mood than me. "Yes, why? It's just curious" it said.

What. "Curious? And what is this 'it'?"

"I don't know what it is, I just feel its curiosity. Well, not anymore, 'cause it's too far away now, but when it was at the door. And it was confused where we went."

Silently I just shook my head in disbelieve. My over-scared and always angsty passenger was not scared for once. Impossible.

When we were just hiding in a room behind the fork - a room with some odd looking, microwave like machines standing in a shelf - I heard the noise again and decided to wait. If my ears didn't fool me I heard it taking the straight way.

"Now it's getting angry, because it doesn't find us" Moony let me know.

"Please, just stop" I begged. "I don't wanna know, I just want to get far, far away from it."

Did I hear just Moony chuckle? Seriously?

It was oddly quiet and we managed to make it around the next corner without interruptions. There was another fork, but this time one way ended shortly after that, while the other ended after some dozen feet. We decided I would scout the short way. The rooms were boring, just some more desks with paper stuff on them. However, the door at the left side looked interesting - I saw some stairs through the keyhole.

"Bro, I found stairs!" I whispered through the corridor. 

He turned around and looked at me questioning, holding a hand behind one ear: "What?"

In this moment it happened again - suddenly we found ourselfes in one of the rooms again we had just left. With its huge sinks and strange glass containers it looked like a lab.

I sighed. "There are stairs behind the last door on the left side" I repeated and we would go straight to it afterwards.

When it was quiet enough we ran straight to that door. Without looking around first. What a mistake. When we passed the fork we heard the noise again, loudly, and turned around.

In front of us a terrible creature stood, like created by a nightmare of some who had met a lot of people he hated and had watched too many horror movies. I couldn't really wrap my mind around it. It was like six feet high and wide, a white wobbly mess blocking the corridor, a blob with eyes, wings, pawns, gills and among others even an appendage that looked like a human arm to me. No, I was wrong. The gills opened up, showed teeth and made an angry noise - actually they were mouthes I had misjudged.

When we heard a noise my brother instantly pushed me backwards as to protect me. "No" I said. "You open the door, I'm keeping it busy."

"Take care of yourself" he said while sprinting to the door and he started to lockpick it.

I didn't really know what to do, but the teeth looked most dangerous, so I jumped to one side where I was furthest away from them. It tried to turn its front part around to me and I thought it would crush me between itself and the wall while trying, so I slid to the direction of its backside. But there was the arm which now grabbed me around the neck.

I must have made some noise, because my brother stopped and turned around to me. The grip let me no air for breathing or speaking, so I just waved at him to go on with his task and tried to grap single fingers while the arm was pulling me to the mouthes.

Before I could do anything it stopped. It was Moony. I felt how it ... gained sympathie? Contrary to my situation I felt a mix of positive emotions flowing into me. Then something strange happened: I saw a red and white colored heart glowing inside of me, which I realized was my soul, but I only saw it in my mind, when blinking or when I closed my eyes. At the same time I saw different souls glowing in the body of the creature - most of them white and upside down, one upright and yellow. A link formed between the white part of my soul and one of the white souls in the creature.

I felt Moony's happiness shining inside me like a warm spring sun when I stepped from the cold shadows into the light. "It's my cousin!" Moony said excited. "I've missed them so much!"

I wondered what this all meant, but at the same time I felt so good I didn't really care. I smiled.

I heard the clicking of the door my bro just opened. "Are you alright?" he asked. "Do you need help?" As I was not screaming or struggling he waited for my answer. Patiently. He knew I would call for him if I needed help.

The creature closed its mouth, which just looked like gills again. The grip of the hand released me, cutting our connection, now leaving me frozen in awe and wondering if it would suddenly rush forward and crush me. Slowly the creature crawled backwards, keeping its many eyes on me. In front of the next door there was enough space it could turn around and disappeared around the next corner.

I stared at the corner as if it would come back any second, finishing what it had started. Then I realized it had just brought me closer to the many eyes above the mouthes to have a better look at me. And the roar was just a terrible try to communicate with me?

"Don't worry. I told them that you're my friend who came to save their brother. They're glad I got a new existence on the surface."

Somehow this made me feel bad. "Uh, about that ..." I decided that I better tell them another day that I killed one of their kind. Probably even one they knew. As we were sharing this body I would us rather trusting each other. "Did you forgot I brought the robots that are destroying the Underground?"

"You didn't do it on purpose. And my cousin said they're alright."

"What? How?"

Silence. "I didn't ask for an explanation."

I felt a touch at my shoulder. My brother was waking me up from my thoughts. "Sorry. Yes, we can go." I really needed to tell him about my new passenger when we had time. Otherwise he would just think I was behaving strangely more often than usual.

"What just happened?" he asked.

"Well, they probably have never seen a human before?" I didn't know how else to summarize my experience.

Behind the door we went up some stairs, leading us to the next higher level, another functional part of the building where the ground now was tiled white and was much cleaner. My brother had to open another door on top of the stairs so we could reach the corridor on this level. In this room I saw a door to the front of us, a door to the left with a sign on it and a window to the right.

"Where should we go?" my brother asked.

Before he had asked I had instantly turned to the window. Wow. Snow. So much snow. I knew where we were. We had good chances to get out of here before the robots found me. But which direction was I looking at?

I took a look onto the sign of the other door and it turned out to be a plan of this building.

I saw three levels, but they didn't match in their dimensions. A red dot marked our position. I spotted our room with two doors and a window near the stairs. The map said there were just small rooms behind the two doors, which I couldn't believe. The other rooms had no marked windows. From the second level I saw barely the rooms we already knew of. The only new thing was the map of the lowest level: a corridor lead away from the stairs, a big room beside it, a long tunnel started from that room leading north, left open with an arrow pointing further. There was also the only label on the whole map, saying "Hotel". I thought I knew which hotel this was - our way out. But who had a plan of a building at this unusual place? I wondered. This was all strange.

My brother made "hm?", waiting for an answer. I considered the two other ways - but the keyholes of both doors were stuffed with something, so he couldn't lockpick them.

"On the map there is a way out" I said. "But it might be a trap."

He stepped to my side to make up his own opinion. "Hm" he made. "Yeah, looks odd. Do you wanna go anyway? Or do you want me to open the window?"

I shivered when I remembered the cold and I had been better prepared than we were now. Plus I didn't know where exactly we were in that snowy place. "Yes, let's take the tunnel. We will be careful." I took the map from the door and we went back down the stairs.

Two levels further down the corridor was covered with wooden blocks that made up the ground. The walls had some dirty yellow color. At least it looked uninhabitated. The door to the big room was open - in this hall beside some storage boxes we saw a couple of big machines. I had no clue what they were for, they just looked like metallic containers to me with weird machine part stuff on it. Beside the folding door that was the entrance of the tunnel according to the map I saw a counter with paper, some glass reservoirs and some metallic utensils, which I somehow associated with a dentist, although they had nothing in common with each other.

My brother lifted something that looked like a strange pincer, turned it in front of his eyes and made it open and close a couple of times.

The folding door had a knob that made it look like locked, but when I pulled it it opened.

Behind the door the corridor began, which was even creepier than before. On the left side some metallic pipes followed the walls, so big I could crawl through them. The right side was covered with cables of different sizes and colors. On the ground I saw a brighter strip in the middle where uncountable feet (or other appendages) had passed by. Yet now it was so empty as if they all had died. And would return any moment as ghosts or zombies.

"I don't like it here" Moony let me know.

"I hoped you could tell me something more cheering" I replied. "Like 'no-one and nothing is here'. That would be great."

"Well, no-one is near, b-but I can't really sense very far ..."

At least it was something. "Feel free to warn me before surprise attacks" I said, but this scared Moony even more.

It took us a while, silently walking through the tunnel. Occasionally I spotted latters leading to trap doors in the ceiling, probably ways out, otherwise the tunnel looked pretty much the same, boring. Then we reached the door of an elevator.

My brother and I looked at each other - he gave me the lead - and I pushed the button. The doors opened and when we stepped in and I saw the labels, I recognized it. "This is the elevator from the hotel!" I informed him excited. I pushed a button. "This will bring us straight to the castle." I was surprised no incidents had occured despite obviously someone wanted us to take this way. Why else?

When the doors opened I now had to walk the same way for a third time, while for my brother it was the first and he looked around interested. I gave him a small guided toor. "This looks like the garden where I hid you while I distracted the goat man."

"But you said it was in that hot area? Not in the snow?"

Well, that was hard to understand, even for me. I could give no other explanation beside that it coincidentially looked the same.

I opened the door. We went down the stairs and followed the next long corridor to the throne room.

I expected something like our first meeting. Instead there were three monsters standing in the throne room, waiting for us: The Queen, Papyrus and the red haired fish lady who had injected me the monster soul. Her grin was as big as ever. But the Queen contrary to her sad kindness on our first meeting was upset and stared at me with anger. 

At my side my brother prepared for a fight. Beside Papyrus he didn't knew them.

"Human" Queen Toriel began, looking straight at me. "I showed you mercy. I gave you a monster soul so you could cross the barrier and return to your kind."

From the corner of my eye I saw my brother turning his head to me in question.

Toriel went on: "And what did you do? You brought those robots here. You brought destruction to my folk. You force us to leave this place before time. Despite I told you that monsters are not ready to meet humankind again."

"I didn't mean to! They tricked me. They w..."

"Shhh" She raised a hand. "I don't want to hear your excuses. You humans don't know what you're doing, just as always. I have to do my best to fix your mistakes."

I say: "If we could have the cube that he has " I point to the skeleton, " and bring it to its true owners, they will fight the robots for you. We can fix it."

"Nah" he said. "Y'know where they can get the cube. Why not use your head for once."

Toriel just added: "We will fix this our ways. I will bring my folk to safety. Undyne." With a wave of her coat she walked forward, passed us by and stepped out of the door.

Undyne grinned: "We will let you go so you can warn your kind about not messing with us monsters again. We now have greater powers than you, I showed them to you in my lab. Now we are the one in control." She followed her Queen.

When I looked back, Papyrus was gone as well. My brother looked around in surprise that he didn't hear him leave.

"Now what?" he asked me.

Silently I stepped though the throne room and out of the other door, where the barrier was. My brother followed me. I remembered how the books said you would need a human soul and a monster soul to cross it. I tried to remember the conditions, but there weren't any. Now here we were with two human souls and one monster soul.

"Come" I said and grabbed his hand. Together we stepped outside.

My brother sighed in relieve and raised his arms to enjoy the sunlight on his skin. While I was thinking about the last conversation.

I knew where they would get the cube, the skeleton had said. I knew it. But what did that mean? The cube was still in the machine. The machine part that still was in the monster world, which was said to be the future of our world, not that long until. How would the robots get it back? Does he mean ... I thought I understood.

Outside the cave I saw a group of robots standing, watching the mountain. Of course the sudden, huge movement of the other faction hadn't stayed unnoticed. Here they were, the others, the "good" ones I assumed, at least the ones that were less destructive and less hostile towards humans. One of them was colored red and blue like Megatron was when he had tricked me. How funny, he hadn't needed to disguise himself as I didn't knew how Optimus looked anyway. What a waste of effort.

"Wait for me" I told my bro, "I need to tell them something."

I approached them slow paced while I was thinking about my words. They were looking at me now.

"Optimus Prime?" I asked. He was huge and came down to one knee to speak with me one eyesight. I repeated my story as I had told Megatron, but now with a different ending. "The Allspark traveled with a time machine into the future, 1013 years from now on. That's when you can get it back."

I thought it would sound riddiculous to them, but on the other hand the robots probably had a much longer life span than we humans.

"Thank you, human" he said and it sounded as if he really ment it. "Then we will wait until then." I stumbled upon his wording. Then I just bid my farewell and returned to my brother.

"Time to go home" he said, taking the lead now that we were out of the cave.

We walked silently. Until he said: "Well, I don't believe in destiny and the world didn't look like ours. What even did we know about their machine, it could lead to another dimension or whatever."

I didn't want to tell him what I thought - I didn't even wanted to know myself what I was thinking. It couldn't be. We had a chance. If we would tell the other humans what we knew, we wouldn't attack the monsters and they would leave us alone, wasn't that what they had said? Besides. I read about it in the books and the monsters even said it: If there was one being with higher determination than the others, they will have power over the timeline. You couldn't just kill all humans, the last one could always reset.

"So, what's it?" he asked. "Will they be fine? Can we do anything else?"

I thought about what I learned today and it hung in the air like a dread. "The monster Queen said she will bring her folk to safety. The evil robots will stay Underground. And you know, I don't believe in destiny. We don't need to die in the next years."

He laughed. "And even if apocalypse comes. You're so stubborn, you will survive even that."

"Only if you join me!" I joked before we decided to return home.


End file.
